Marc Limon is Executive Director of the Universal Rights Group (URG). He will address the following the questions in relation to the emerging climate change challenge within a human rights framework:

- What more can the Human Rights Council and its mechanisms (Special Procedures and the UPR), and the UN Treaty Bodies, do to contribute to the global fight against climate change, environmental destruction, and biodiversity loss?

- What more can the High Commissioner for Human Rights do, especially as a ‘voice for the voiceless,’ to raise the severe human rights consequences of global warming and environmental harm, and to press for more equitable and just solutions?

- What more can the High Commissioner and the Council do to promote environmental rights, and the universal recognition of the right to a clean and healthy environment?

- What role would States like to see can the UN Human Rights Office play to further support the work of the Council, EHRDs and wider civil society to leverage rights to protect the climate and natural environment and how can States support this work?

Abstract: Ahmed Shaheed

Human Rights and Global Challenges: The Rise of Public Religions

Modernisation has often been seen as associated with the secularisation of the public space. However, in recent years, religion has become more prominent even in societies that had been previously secular, and violence based on religion or religious identity has forced many governments to take national security measures that encroach on a number of fundamental freedoms. Meanwhile, religious intolerance has been identified as an important issue in the foreign policy of a number of great powers, threatening to politicise and instrumentalise parts of the human rights agenda which could further fragment efforts to promote human rights and increase intolerance based on religion or belief. As a result of the rise of public religions and the greater visibility of religion in international relations, some of the leading actors involved in the ‘new religion diplomacy’ are mobilising faith-based actors to advance international human rights as a way to foster peace and societal harmony. This is however an enterprise that faces many challenges—from normative conflicts between religious teachings and human rights commitments to instrumentalization of religion diplomacy for sectarian interests. I will reflect on the opportunities and challenges to human rights in mobilising faith-based actors to advance human rights; and on the lessons learned from recent engagements between religious actors and human rights.

Bios:

Marc Limon is Executive Director of the Universal Rights Group (URG), a think tank focused on international human rights policy, with offices in Geneva, New York, and Bogota. Marc Limon worked as a diplomat at the UN Human Rights Council from the body’s establishment in 2006 until the end of 2012. This included participating in the negotiations on the institution-building package, on the Council’s mid-term review, and on a wide-range of thematic and country-specific issues. He was lead negotiator on nine different UN resolutions dealing with issues such as human rights and climate change, human rights and the environment, freedom of assembly and association, and the Third Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Alongside his colleague Subhas Gujadhur (Mauritius), he also established the Human Rights Council’s Trust Fund to support the participation of Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States.

Lorna McGregor is a Professor of International Human Rights Law in the Law School, Director of the Human Rights Centre and PI and Director of the ESRC Human Rights, Big Data and Technology (HRBDT) project. Her work has appeared in journals such as the American Journal of International Law, the European Journal of International Law, the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, the Journal of International Criminal Justice and the International Journal of Transitional Justice and has been cited by the UK House of Lords and International Court of Justice. In 2015, Lorna was awarded the Antonio Cassese Prize for International Criminal Law Studies.

Dr Andrew Fagan is presently Co-Deputy Director of the HRC. He is due to succeed the current Director, Professor Lorna McGregor, from January 1st 2020. Andrew has a broad multi and interdisciplinary academic background. Andrew has been teaching human rights at Essex since 1998 and is internationally recognised for his human rights scholarship.

Ahmed Shaheed is senior lecturer in human rights in the School of Law and co-deputy director of the Human Rights Centre. He is also the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, having been appointed to that position by the UN Human Rights Council in 2016.